Get Rid Of The Mini-Me Algorithm

The Problem

It seems like every time I grade a stack of papers, I learn something new about why people write badly.  I'm always glad to learn something new, of course, but I know it does my current students little good if I only figure out where they will go wrong after they go wrong.

Today's insight may be specific to a certain kind of writing assignment, though I'm not sure - it may prove to be more general.  I asked my students to summarize a chapter from a book.  The summaries were to be 5-6 double-spaced pages, meaning that the chapters they were summarizing had about 10 times as many words.

The problem was that most of the summaries used exactly the same outline as the target chapter.  My students seemed to be adopting a "Mini-Me" algorithm for writing their summaries (Mini-Me being the character in the Austin Powers movie franchise who was a smaller version of the main character).  Rather than summarize the chapter, my students dutifully went page by page in the chapter, summarizing each topic the author discussed in the target article, and in the exact same order.

I can certainly understand this impulse.  This "algorithm" (an algorithm is a programmatic series of steps guaranteed to complete a task) ensures that every component of the chapter will be mentioned in the summary, and therefore the student won't get marked off for leaving out something critical.  Unfortunately, there are several major drawbacks to this approach:

1.  The resulting summary is very dry - the student feels like he or she must include all the terms and jargon, and has space for little else.

2.  The resulting summary is stilted.  Ideas don't flow, because, to fit 20 printed pages into 5 double-spaced pages, all transitions, explications, and synthetic observations must be removed.

3.  The resulting summary is unoriginal.  The student uses no original thought in the design of the paper - the organization is completely set by the target chapter - and the student has no space for any other original contributions.  Worse, the professor grading the paper is invited to think that the student doesn't necessarily even understand the target chapter, since the paper is merely a dehydrated version of the target chapter.

4.  The resulting summary is more difficult to understand than the target chapter.  One goal of a summary should be to simplify a complex topic and distill it down to the most important concepts presented in a lively, coherent, and clear manner.  By adopting the Mini-Me algorithm, the summary includes not just the most important concepts but also a number of less important concepts and without space to clarify which is which.

Proof That This Is Bad Writing

Here's the proof that this is bad writing.  Imagine the author of the target chapter had been told: sorry, you can't use 10,000 words for this topic.  You can only use 1250 words.

Do you think that the author would write the chapter in exactly the same way?  Would he or she include all of the same topics, in exactly that order, and just reduce the number of words written about each topic?

That's hard to believe.  The author would probably first ask himself or herself, what do I absolutely need to get across?  What elements of this chapter are useful not only for specialists, but for anyone who might read this chapter?  What examples do I use that are the most memorable?  What concepts are the most general?

Following that brainstorming session, the author would then tear up the long version of the chapter and start on a fresh page.  It would be a completely re-envisioned document - a completely new chapter.  Nowhere in the author's writing method would Mini-Me appear.

The Solution

Fortunately, there's an easy solution (and in a coincidence that is no coincidence, it is a solution I offered in my previous blog post, Don't Quote!).  Here is the best algorithm for writing a chapter summary:

Read - Reflect* - Write* - Rewrite

The stages with the asterisks mean that you can't read during these stages.  You shouldn't even consult any notes, except perhaps the barest outline.  That is, when you are reflecting, don't read.  And when you are writing, don't read.

Read the chapter.  Take notes.  Read your notes.  Reread the chapter.  Get yourself to a point where you understand the chapter.  You certainly won't have every single detail in your head, but what you should have is the gist of the chapter.  You should have the most important concepts.  You will remember a couple of really memorable examples.  (Go back and read the third paragraph under Proof That This Is Bad Writing, and see if the list of things you know aren't exactly the things you would need to know to write a good 1250 word chapter summary.)  This is the reflection stage - figure out what are the highlights, then start thinking about how you would communicate those highlights to a reader.

When you begin to write, do not refer back to the target article.  This will ensure that you don't write in the same sequence as the target article, and it will reduce the likelihood that you will include unnecessary details.  You won't be able to take any direct quotes (almost always a good thing to avoid).  Your writing more lively and interesting, because you will probably best-remember the most interesting aspects of the target chapter.  You will only be able to write about what you truly understand, which was probably the professor's goal in assigning the summary in the first place.  You will be forced to include original content in the form of how you organize the summary, make transitions between points, and justify the importance of the concepts you are including.

At the rewriting stage, you are allowed to review your notes and the target chapter.  There is much less danger now that you will shove in unnecessary details or undo the good work of organizing that you have already done.  These additional details and clarifications will now be forced to fit your paper, which is a lot better than the Mini-Me model, in which your paper is forced to fit the details of the target chapter.

And finally, a word about rewriting.  I think another of the Mini-Me algorithm's failures is that it is so sequential.  If you write as you flip the pages of the target chapter, it feels like, when you get to the end, you are done.  What's to go back and rewrite?  You've already assured yourself that you've "gotten everything."  The Mini-Me algorithm is so bad that you can actually convince yourself that rewriting is unnecessary.  By rewriting I do not mean tearing up and starting again.  I mean reflecting on each paragraph in your first draft and asking yourself if it is clear, complete, and flows well with the previous and succeeding paragraphs.  This stage is critical to good writing; any algorithm that omits this stage should be suspect.